


Red Orchid

by Butterfly



Series: Flowers [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Crack, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-30
Updated: 2008-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-26 19:39:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/287119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Butterfly/pseuds/Butterfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He should probably have just gotten therapy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Orchid

**Author's Note:**

> Regeneration. Crack fic. Utterly to be blamed on the media for making a huge deal out of David's joking around on BBC Breakfast and arabian for telling me to write it.

“Doctor! _Doctor_!”

Ah, young Lizzie's voice. She sounded rather distressed. Why would that be?

Right, he'd just been hit by a lethal laser blast and had only just managed to get himself and Lizzie secured in the TARDIS before regeneration. Still, this time, he _had_ actually managed to warn Lizzie about this sort of thing months before it had actually happened, so he wasn't sure why she was sounded quite so surprised.

“Doctor! Oh, please wake up. This can't be right. Oh, _please_ ,” she pleaded. He blinked his eyes open and looked up at her. She was kneeling over him, tear tracks drying on her face.

“I _did_ warn you,” he said. “Ages ago. It's not my fault if you've got the memory of a goose.”

Then he paused.

Something was different about his voice.

 _More_ different than it would usually be.

“You didn't say anything about turning into a woman,” Lizzie said, a world of accusation in her voice. Orphan or not, he really shouldn't have said 'yes' when she asked to come along. Fifteen year-old girls were a lot more trouble these days than he remembered them being in the past. “A whole new _man_ , you said.”

Ah, that was it, then, about the voice. How peculiar.

“I've never been a woman before,” he said absently. Gender transmodification hadn't been entirely unknown among his people, but it was something that, if it happened at all, would tend happen during the first regeneration. Even in his people's oldest stories, he could only think of two Time Lords who had bounced between genders freely even as they aged. Most tended to settle. Personally, he'd never felt anything other than male, which made this very odd.

Hmm. 'He'. Was he going to need to start thinking of himself as a 'she' now?

He looked down and noticed that the buttons on his outer shirt had... well, burst apart just a little. Still, at least his undershirt was still in place, if stretched. And his trousers fit, of course. No Time Lord would dare to go without trousers that would shift shape and size during a regeneration. While he was looking in that direction, he took the opportunity to poke experimentally at one of his breasts. It squished in and Lizzie squeaked in alarm.

He might feel like a 'she' on the outside, but he still felt like a 'he' on the inside.

And after hundreds of years of thinking of himself using male pronouns, he didn't feel like changing just because he currently had female sex organs. It was probably an odd regenerational hiccup caused by the lack of other Time Lords.

Still, what sort of logic was his biology operating on? There weren't any more males _about_ for him to mate with to renew the species. Not since...

well, maybe that was the answer. His body remembered its exposure to another male Time Lord's pheromones, but wasn't clever enough to realize that the male in question had died.

What a completely rubbish biological response.

“You're prettier than I am,” Lizzie said, despondently. “ _Still_.”

“Am I?” the Doctor asked, bouncing up, his mood lightening. He still bounced, though parts of him bounced a bit more than he was used to. “We should go to the wardrobe room. I need to find something new anyway.”

“Are you going to be vain now?” Lizzie asked, standing up. Then she paused, a pensive look on her face. “Well, _more_ vain.”

“I've never been vain a day in my life,” the Doctor said. He reached out and grabbed Lizzie's hand and pulled her along into the halls of the TARDIS. Once she was moving alongside him, he let go of her hand and then held his hand in front of his face as they went along. It was a nice hand, with cleaner fingernails than he'd remembered having before the regeneration. There were tiny, pale hairs on his arm, which made him mourn a bit for the manly, hairy hands that he'd had before, but it was probably for the best.

At least, if Lizzie was correct in her assessment of his looks.

They reached the room in record time and he jogged over to the mirror, ready to see what sort of woman he was.

Well.

That was...

A bit awkward, really.

“If my people were still around, they'd put me through a therapeutic mind-link for this,” he muttered.

Because there, staring back at him in the mirror, was Rose Tyler.

Well, not _exactly_ Rose. The regeneration process couldn't handle anything as unnatural as bleached hair, so his hair was genuinely blonde, no roots. In his opinion, it didn't look quite as good that way. His eyebrows were slightly lighter in color than Rose's, though a bit thicker. His eyelashes were thick, the way Rose's looked when she wore mascara rather than when her face was freshly washed, and his lips were rather redder than hers were by nature as well.

He would definitely need to change his shirts. These really didn't fit at all. He bit his lip and then blinked in surprise at the rush of warmth that hit him deep in his stomach. Well.

Awkward really was the right word.

“What's wrong?” Lizzie asked, hovering over his shoulder. “I mean, apart from the obvious.”

“Oh, nothing,” the Doctor said, a sly smile crossing his face. He'd seen that look on Rose's face a time or two, generally when she wanted something from him. “I should go... find something appropriate to wear, that's all.”

“Oh, there's a lovely red jacket that would fit you perfectly!” Lizzie said, sounding completely over her tiny fit of jealousy. She rushed off and the Doctor leaned a bit closer to the mirror.

His eyes were Rose's eyes, exactly as they'd looked when he'd last seen them at Bad Wolf Bay. His face had all the tiny, perfect imperfections of Rose's face. He mouthed the word 'Doctor' and it was just the way Rose's mouth moved when she said his name.

He probably had her accent, too, though he wouldn't sound the same to himself as she did to him – not unless he recorded himself and played the sound back to himself. Which was rather shamefully tempting.

“Here it is!” Lizzie grabbed at his shoulder and he was... unsurprised to see that it was one of Rose's old jackets. Still, it _would_ fit. “There's a whole section of things that are this size and sort of style. I think that you would look like a dish in them! You know, I always wanted a big sister.”

Rose's section, which, if he recalled correctly, was still packed with more clothes than she'd ever had the chance to actually wear. All of them would be just his size and he actually did feel more casual in this body, not really the sort of person to wear suits.

On the other hand, it might be considered a bit...

well...

disturbing if he went around wearing Rose's old clothes in a regeneration that was based off of her. On the _other_ other hand, unless he went to visit Jack or Martha or Sarah Jane or Mickey or...

any of the rest of them...

unless he did that, no one would _know_ that that's what he was doing.

Hmm.

On the _other_ other other hand, he would know. Which should probably matter.

Lizzie snagged his hand and was pulling him off to what he was certain would be Rose's section. And, indeed, it was. There was her yellow top and her jean jacket and her pink headband and... too many items to name.

“It's like this part of the room was _made_ for you,” Lizzie said.

“It's a big room,” the Doctor said, reaching forward and plucking out the blue-and-purple top that he'd put back down here himself. It was the one that he'd had up in the console room when he'd first met Donna. Rose had worn it on New Earth, when Cassandra had kissed him in her body, and later on Dextros Three, when she'd first kissed him in full control of herself.

It was a good shirt.

“That'll look nice on you,” Lizzie said.

“Yes, it did,” he said, too softly for her to hear. He scooped up a pair of trousers and opened a drawer that should... yes, that _did_ contain new underthings, as well as socks. Socks were very important. That was the wisest thing that Dumbledore had ever told Harry. He rather believed that he was a sock person in this regeneration, so he took care to pick out a soft-looking blue pair with tiny white roses stitched around the tops.

“I'm just going to go change,” he said, more loudly. “In my room. I'll see you later.”

“It'll only take you a few minutes, though, right?” Lizzie asked. “Just to change. I mean, you could just use the changing booth in here.”

“Could I?” the Doctor said, carrying his handful of clothing and heading toward where his room was. “Oh, no, I couldn't possibly. I need to... sort through my things and see if there's anything else that I might be able to keep using in this regeneration.”

“You do?” Lizzie asked.

“And I have a lot of things,” the Doctor said, taking a glance at himself in the mirror as they passed it. He thought very hard at the TARDIS, knowing that she would make the needed adjustment to his room. “It could take hours. You should probably... read. Go to the TARDIS library and do some reading.”

“Really?” Lizzie asked. He didn't look over at her, sure that his face must be sporting a very bright shade of red. “Going through your old stuff is going to take that long?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, willing his voice not to crack or squeak or do anything else embarrassing. “Hours. If not longer.”

Lizzie shrugged and turned left at the next intersection – after eight months, she knew the ship just about as well as anyone could. She was an intensely bright girl, Lizzie was, and very sweet. In his softer moments, he was willing to admit to himself that she reminded him of his Susan.

As soon as she was out of hearing range, he started sprinting to where his room was, opening the door quickly and then looking up hopefully.

And he grinned, that insanely large smile of Rose's.

The entire ceiling was now a mirror.


End file.
